


Kennel Buddy

by Badwolf36



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Dog Jokes, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode: s03e24 The Divine Move, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Nogitsune Trauma, Post-Nogitsune, Taking Pain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-08
Updated: 2014-06-08
Packaged: 2018-02-03 21:13:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1757165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Badwolf36/pseuds/Badwolf36
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Deaton makes a call to Derek after Stiles picks unusual new accommodations for the night.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Kennel Buddy

**Title:** Kennel Buddy  
 **Fandom:** Teen Wolf  
 **Rating:** PG-13  
 **Characters:** Derek Hale, Stiles Stilinski, Alan Deaton  
 **Word count:** 4,088  
 **Disclaimer:** I do not own Teen Wolf or any related properties.  
 **Warnings:** Set just before the ending of "The Divine Move."  
 **Summary:** Deaton makes a call to Derek after Stiles picks unusual new accommodations for the night.

*******************

 

Propped up against the pillows on his bed in the corner of his loft, Derek is reading a book on herb gardening when his cellphone starts buzzing across his nightstand. He takes a split second to mourn the loss of his peaceful evening before abandoning his book in favor of the trilling device.

“Hello?”

“Derek?”

“Deaton. What’s wrong?” Derek pins his cellphone between his shoulder and his ear, stuffing his feet into the shoes he’d had resting neatly at the foot of his bed. Deaton doesn’t call for casual chats, so obviously something’s already gone terribly wrong.

He’s already rising to his feet and searching for his leather jacket and his car keys before there’s a response.

“I’ve already called his father, and he agreed it would be alright if he spent the night here. I wanted to call Scott, but he specifically requested I not do so.”

“Who are you…Stiles? Is he okay?”

There’s hesitation on the other end of the line.

“I think it would be beneficial to him if you were here.” Derek thinks that’s probably the first time anyone has ever thought that, but he just says, “OK. I’ll be there as quick as I can.”

Before he can hang up, Deaton adds “Derek. I wouldn’t have called you if I didn’t think you were the right person for this.”

Then the line goes dead.

Derek lets out a snarl, even though there’s no one else around to hear it. He shoves the phone in his pocket, throws his jacket on over his maroon Henley and slides the heavy metal door to his loft shut behind him before he starts running for his car.

*******

“Where is he?” Derek demands as he comes in the front of the veterinary office, ignoring the ‘Closed’ sign on the door, but unable to disregard the mountain ash barrier that stops him at the front counter. “Is he hurt? Why didn’t he want you to call Scott?”

Deaton (Derek supposes he’s old enough now to call him Alan, but the man has never offered and Derek’s never asked) just raises a placating right hand as he rests his left on the swinging door next to the counter. The man is dressed in a long-sleeved black shirt and dark jeans, and his posture is relaxed even though his expression looks a bit pinched.

“He’s physically fine. He didn’t want to call Scott because he didn’t want to worry him more than he already is. He didn’t want me to call anyone, actually, but I vetoed that particular request and made a judgment call. His father was obvious. You were…less so. But I don’t think I’m wrong.”

Derek makes a very concerted effort not to let his nails extend into claws as his patience (never a strong suit of his) wears dangerously thin.

“Care to explain what you mean by ‘physically fine,’ Deaton?”

Deaton just raises an eyebrow at him before setting his right hand on the counter door as well.

“Exactly as I said. Consider what Stiles went through.”

And Derek doesn’t have to think hard to do that. He’d tried to put himself in Stiles’ shoes for days as he searched for him, and he’s been doing the same thing now that the Nogitsune is no longer controlling Stiles’ every action.

Deaton nods, apparently privy to Derek’s thought process.

“That boy had his father commit him to Eichen House in an attempt, a failed one, but an attempt to keep the chaos to a minimum.”

Bristling at the mention of the mental health facility, Derek gestures at Deaton to get to the point. Deaton shakes his head though.

“Eichen House was not kind to Stiles in many regards. Marin told me as much, and Malia filled in some of the other details.”

The betrayer and the werecoyote.

Derek hasn’t crossed paths with Marin Morrell personally, although her actions serving as the Alpha Pack’s emissary ensured she’ll never be held in fond regard in Derek’s mind.

He has yet to meet Malia Tate, but both Scott and Stiles have spoken of her in kind terms.

Stiles had gone all red and embarrassed when he’d talked about his time with her at Eichen House, quickly changing the subject even though a fond smile remained on his face for a moment before twisting down under the weight of what Derek identified by scent as sadness and guilt. He doesn’t know exactly what happened between them, but Stiles hasn’t once mentioned his virgin status since everything with the Nogitsune ended, so Derek has to assume the two are connected. He tries not to dwell on the strange feeling in his stomach when he draws that conclusion.

Derek knew Stiles and Scott had both been helping Malia work on her control and her shift. Derek had given Scott a few tips for her actually, but he’d mostly been distracted by the way her scent had clung to both of them, cloyingly familiar in a way he couldn’t quite identify. Oddly enough, it reminded him of Peter’s scent before the fire and before his death (and resurrection).

“I’m not seeing where you’re going with this,” Derek admits.

Deaton nods, like he expected that. Derek has gotten used to the emissary’s strange ways over the years, but it doesn’t make his infuriating nature easier to deal with. Derek takes a deep breath, scenting mountain ash and the pervasive scent of animals and then, below all that, the putrid stench of exhaustion and fear and despair twined with the scent of the electrified air before a storm that’s uniquely Stiles.

“Deaton, what…?”

“Eichen House wasn’t a place he considered safe. Frankly, considering what happened with Scott and Kira _here_ , I’m a bit shocked that he would consider this place safe either. Perhaps it was because I poisoned him with letharia vulpina here and stopped him from hurting Scott further.”

“Deaton!” Derek snaps.

Mildly surprised, Deaton looks up and studies Derek.

“Sometimes, Derek, we get to choose the cages we put ourselves in. If the ones for humans weren’t enough to hold him, I imagine Stiles decided that the ones for animals would.”

And with a sickening sense of clarity, Derek gets it.

“Show me,” he says, and Deaton finally swings the counter door open, breaking the barrier line. Derek pushes past the veterinarian, following Stiles’ scent back to the open door of one of the side rooms.

The bank of kennels against the right side of the wall is empty of animals, although the scent of dog lingers heavily in the air.

Deaton appears in the doorframe behind Derek, the sound of his steps echoing softly on the concrete floor.

“He played with the puppies earlier, and it calmed him down a little, but he said he didn’t want to risk hurting anyone or anything while he was sleeping.” Deaton pauses. “I can’t say he’s given himself that same courtesy.”

Derek reaches the last cage in the room, and snarls as he notices the heavy chain and padlock looped between the chain link of the cage door and the steel support beam embedded in the concrete opposite it.

He turns back to glare at Deaton, and he knows his eyes are glowing bright blue. Deaton doesn’t bother to look scared or even concerned as he leans casually against the doorframe.

“Another request,” he says. “He brought the chain and lock himself.”

Deaton fishes in his jeans pocket for a moment, coming up with a set of keys Derek has seen dangling from the ignition of a familiar blue Jeep. He tosses them to Derek and Derek snatches them out of the air, matching a silver key to the brand of padlock and using it to snap it open.

Derek pulls the chain free from around the bar, and lets it dangle from the cage door’s links as he shoves the padlock into his right jacket pocket. It’s as he’s tipping up the horseshoe-shaped cage door latch that he pauses and actually looks in the kennel.

Stiles is gazing up at him with wide, bloodshot amber eyes from where he’s sitting bolt upright on a pile of saddle blankets and mismatched fleece blankets sprinkled with a liberal coating of fur.

Derek spots that he’s dressed in red flannel pants and wearing thick white socks that disappear under the pants from where the tan blanket that’s covering him has been twisted around his legs and kicked aside. His torso is covered by a black sweatshirt with the Beacon Hills Sheriff’s Department logo screenprinted above the right breast and Derek can see the stretched out collar of a white T-shirt peeking up from the sweatshirt’s collar.

Stiles is also clutching a pillow with a light blue pillowcase to his stomach, and it’s obvious he just pulled it out from beneath his head for some kind of protection.

“Derek?” he whispers, and the sound of his voice is absolutely wrecked, like he’s been screaming for hours. “What are you…why…? I don’t understand.”

“I’ll leave you to it,” Deaton says lowly, and Derek has a feeling the words are pitched just for his supernaturally keen hearing.

“Hey, Stiles,” Derek says, trying to modulate his voice enough that the words come out soft and comforting. He has a feeling he fails.

Stiles scrambles up a little as Derek actually pulls open the gate to the kennel, pressing his back against the whitewashed cinderblock walls that make up the kennel’s back wall.

“No. Nononono,” Stiles murmurs, sounding more and more agitated. “You have to lock it. I can get out. Lock it. Please. You have to lock it, please. Lock it. Lock it. Lock it!”

He shifts the pillow so it’s half against his chest and half against his face, the down muffling his pleas as they start growing in volume.

Derek pulls the padlock out of his pocket and shows it to Stiles before he turns around.

“Okay, Stiles. Okay,” he says placatingly as he slides the chain back around the support pole; this time in reverse so he can snap the chain on the lock on the inside of the cage. The lock makes a solid click as the parts slide together, and Derek hears a sigh behind him.

When he turns around, Stiles is slumped back against the wall and his death grip on his pillow has loosened. Derek takes a surreptitious breath of the air, scenting the chemosignals there. Beneath the lingering and permeating stench of canine, he’s nearly bowled over by the suffocating exhaustion, the sour terror and the faint rainwater scent of tears. There’s also a stringent chemical smell which Derek has always assumed is Stiles’ Adderall.

“It’s locked,” Derek says quietly. “It’s locked. You won’t get out.” He feels a bit sick the moment the words leave his mouth (he’s personally been locked away and tortured far too often, and he _knows_ Stiles doesn’t deserve to be locked up), but it appears to comfort Stiles. Derek slips the key into his jeans pocket while Stiles is looking off to the side.

“That’s good,” Stiles says, rolling his head back and forth against the cinderblock it’s resting against. “Good.”

Derek toes off his running shoes and shrugs off his jacket, throwing it over the top of the cage door and wincing when the action makes it rattle noisily. He then steps off the concrete and onto the pile of blankets, crouching down at the point where Stiles’ sock-covered toes are exposed.

Stiles stares at him then, eyes a bit wild-looking.

“I must seem insane,” he says, and then, before Derek can comment, “but I can’t go where the insane people go. Not after…I just…I just can’t.”

“Alright,” Derek says. “Can I sit down?”

Stiles seems surprised, but he nods. Derek thinks of just sitting where he is, but he decides to take some initiative when he sees Stiles shivering.

He first untangles the blanket from around Stiles’ legs, straightening out the cover before tucking it under Stiles’ feet, which jump up beneath his touch. That accomplished, he shifts forward so he can lift up a corner of the blanket and slide in next to Stiles, setting the blanket back down over both of them.

Stiles stiffens as Derek slides an arm around his back, but soon relaxes into Derek’s side, shifting closer to his warmth and pushing his pillow behind his back.

“I feel I should explain,” Stiles says. Derek pulls him a little closer.

“You don’t have to.”

Stiles huffs, pulling his hand from beneath the blanket to gesture at their surroundings.

“You don’t find this a bit strange?”

Derek decides to humor him.

“Stiles, you’re friends with werewolves, a kitsune, and a banshee. I hardly think you spending the night in a dog kennel instead of a mental institution so you can get some sleep, which you very obviously need, is beyond the pale.”

Stiles pulls away from him, a strange expression on his face, like he’s studying Derek and the facts aren’t adding up in his brain.

“What?”

“That’s…you don’t usually talk this much.”

Derek blows out a heavy breath in frustration before he draws another and says “We haven’t really talked in…a long time. Not _us_ , anyways.” Stiles flinches, and Derek wishes he would have kept to his taciturn ways.

They sit there in silence for a while, the awkward air around them broken only by the occasional yowl or bark from the animal-filled rooms on either side of them.

“I played with the puppies earlier,” Stiles says finally. “I feel you should do that. Commune with your dog cousins. And it’s really hard to be upset or angry when you’re playing with a puppy. Might even get that perma-scowl off your face.”

“Dog cousins?” Derek asks incredulously.

Stiles falls back into Derek’s side, yawning a little.

“You know,” Stiles says, gesturing with both of his hands now, although the movements are a little jerky, like he doesn’t quite have control over his limbs. “Werewolves. Dogs. Canines. Descendants.”

“Please don’t,” Derek says. He catches Stiles’ left hand with his right, then recoils when he starts drawing Stiles’ pain automatically, his veins turning black as his body pulls at the deep ache Stiles is harboring. He hasn’t tried to take someone’s pain since he lost his alpha power while saving Cora using the technique. The fact that he’s doing it for Stiles is just as much as of a shock as the fact that Stiles has successfully managed to hide being in such utter agony. “Stiles?”

Stiles scoots away from him, both his scent and his expression infused with fear again. He ends up pressed against the corner of the kennel, the blanket still covering one side of him.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he cries, almost in tears. “It happened to Scott, too, right after it separated us. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I’m so sorry. It’s getting better, I swear. You don’t have to tell anybody. Don’t tell anybody, please. I’m so sorry.”

It takes Derek a moment to shake off the shock, but when he does, he rips the blanket off them both. He reaches out and grabs Stiles by the bicep, yanking him down onto the blankets serving as their mattress before he curls his body around him.

Stiles fights him like a wild animal, spitting and clawing, but he’s still obviously weak and sleep deprived and in pain. He eventually slumps down, body going slack in Derek’s arms.

“Don’t,” he whimpers. “It’s mine. Please. Don’t.”

Derek has to parse out what ‘mine’ means, and when he realizes that Stiles is talking about the pain, he feels anguish of his own.

“Stiles,” Derek croons, and the tone sounds unnatural coming from him, but he’s willing to try for a member of Scott’s pack. Of _his_ pack. Whether Stiles or the Nogitsune had crowned him king on the chessboard in his room, Derek obviously means something strong in his mind. And he can be that for Stiles if he tries hard enough. He may not be good at it, but he’s always been able to try. “Hey, hey. Easy. Don’t fight. I’m not going to hurt you.”

“You should!” Stiles tries to snap, but it comes out sounding more like a plea. “You all should! They’re dead! They’re all dead because of me!”

And how many times had Derek wanted to shout those words at Laura after the fire? Shout them and gain some sense of absolution from what he’d prayed at the time would be his alpha’s swift and brutal retribution? But he hadn’t, because he heard Laura crying in the bathroom after she thought he was asleep. He hadn’t, because Peter’s nurse called with regular updates about his condition that weren’t updates at all. He hadn’t, because it wouldn’t have brought any of his pack back to life.

Stiles starts crying, and Derek thinks of his mother, of how she would have known the right thing to say. He wishes he had her power, her skill, her wisdom. He wishes he could have been the kind of alpha she was, even though he knows he shouldn’t have been an alpha at all.

Instead, he became an alpha through murder, one who gathered his pack because he was lonely and trained them with brutality because it was the only way he knew to deal with the world and the fight that was sure to come.

He wishes he could transform into a full wolf like his mother could, because he thinks of what Stiles said earlier about the puppies and how comforting they were and imagines the teenager would be more willing to curl up with a large, warm, somewhat-cuddly wolf then Derek and his inadequacies.

But he’s not his mother and he can’t think of what she would say here. Instead, he turns to himself, and hopes it’s enough.

“Me hurting you would only hurt us both,” Derek says as he takes Stiles’ pillow from where it had fallen at the head of their “bed” and tucks it under Stiles’ head. “And I don’t want to do that anymore.”

Stiles’ shoulders slump forward, pulling his body a little out of Derek’s grasp, but not enough that Derek feels the need to reel him back in.

“I don’t know what to do anymore,” Stiles admits quietly. “We’re helping Malia with her coyote thing, and that’s great. She doesn’t get basic social norms, but she hasn’t been around humans for a long time, so I totally get it. Kira is nice and she likes comic books and Scott really seems to like her. Lydia’s…I don’t know how she does it. She’s dealing with it. She still flinches when she sees me, but she’s hiding it better now. And Scott…I don’t know how he can look at me. but he does. I can’t even look at myself anymore, Derek.”

He turns around in Derek’s arms, setting his head back down on his pillow.

“I don’t know how you can look at me either. Deaton shouldn’t have called you.”

Derek sighs. Deaton really shouldn’t have called _him_ , but he had and Derek can’t imagine being anywhere other than here at this moment.

“Just because you think you should deal with something on your own doesn’t mean you should.” Derek presses his hand against Stiles’ neck and starts drawing away some of his pain. It hurts, it _really_ hurts, and he can’t understand how Stiles is coping. He considers their surroundings and comes to the conclusion that Stiles really isn’t coping.

Stiles tries to jerk away again, but Derek pins him down. Drawing Stiles’ pain is quickly getting to be excruciating, but he has a point to make.

“I looked for you,” Derek says, and Stiles stops moving. “I searched for you for days. I went to _Argent_ to keep him from putting the Nogitsune down because it would have meant putting you down too and I couldn’t have stood for that. And I won’t stand for you doing this to yourself. Suffering gets you nowhere, Stiles. It doesn’t bring back the dead. They’re gone and it’s always going to hurt, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t accept help when it’s offered to you.”

There’s silence for a long time.

“Did anyone ever offer you help?” Stiles asks as Derek reaches his limit with taking Stiles’ pain and forces himself to stop drawing it off. It’s still sickeningly tempting to go further, even knowing the consequences would likely be far beyond his ken.

“What?” he asks, confused and a little disoriented by the sudden lack of pain flowing through his system.

“Help,” Stiles says, pulling Derek’s limp hand away from his neck and draping it over his shoulder in a dim approximation of a hug. “After everything with Kate, did anyone ever offer you help?”

Derek still can’t think of Kate without fear invading every ounce of his being. Even knowing Peter slit her throat with his claws isn’t a balm to his nerves on the nights when fire engines streak past his loft with sirens blazing.

Laura had done the best she could to help him, even while dealing with her new alpha powers and the loss of their family. Peter had assisted him in his own bizarre, self-serving, psychotic way once he’d pulled himself out of his coma and from the jaws of death. Cora hadn’t asked for anything or given him anything in return because he hadn’t been able to do the same. And Scott, True Alpha that he is, still has a lot to learn about pack dynamics and what helping a pack member means beyond just saving their life.

“I’m fine,” Derek says. Stiles gives him a sad smile.

“Yeah? Then so am I.”

Derek works his jaw a few times in frustration, but there’s not really an answer he can give to that that won’t prove Stiles’ point.

Instead he says “I’m surprised you didn’t just bed down with the puppies.”

“I didn’t want to hurt them,” Stiles says matter-of-factly, and it’s almost worse than if he would have whispered it.

“I’m not a puppy,” Derek finally manages, and Stiles shoves his head under Derek’s chin.

“I know,” he says. “Puppy would be cuddlier, but I guess I can make do.”

“I’m honored,” Derek says sarcastically, but he’s actually a bit pleased. People don’t come to him for comfort. They come to him to make a point or get advice or set him like a wolf on prey.

They don’t come with short breaths huffed out over his collarbone that are evening out as Stiles drifts to sleep. People’s scents don’t lose the bitter tang of fear and pick up the warm laundry smell of contentment like Stiles’ is doing around him. They don’t find security and peace in his presence, like Stiles appears to be doing.

“If I have a nightmare, could you…uh…”

“I’ll wake you up,” Derek says as he tugs an inch of Stiles’ pillow over for his own use. He hesitates for a moment before adding “The nightmares. They…well, they stick around. But you, you’ll be able to deal with them better. Eventually. Probably.”

“Derek?”

“Yeah?”

“A puppy would have been quieter.”

Derek snorts.

“Not a dog, Stiles. Let’s just shut up and go to sleep.” Stiles abruptly tenses in his arms.

“The cage door is still locked, right?” he asks, a frantic edge cutting into his words.

Sighing, Derek leans up and lets his eyes glow blue in the dim light of the kennel so he can clearly see the lock and chain on the cage door.

“It’s locked, Stiles. You won’t get out. I won’t let you.” Stiles slumps down against Derek again, obviously having watched him check the lock, and lets out a noise too soft to be a sigh.

“Thanks. I…uh…I know spending a night in a dog kennel with a guy who’s sort of crazy probably wasn’t how you wanted to spend your evening.”

“It’s fine, Stiles.” Derek sees Stiles open his mouth to protest or maybe just continue talking, but he preempts him by pressing his left palm against the back of Stiles’ head, stroking his fingers through the longish brown hairs there. “It will be, anyways. Now shut up and go to sleep.”

Derek feels Stiles’ lips quirk up against his exposed collarbone.

“Goodnight, Derek.”

Stiles’ breathing smoothes out slowly, eventually going deep and rhythmic. It’s only when Derek is absolutely sure that Stiles has drifted off to sleep that he replies “Goodnight, Stiles.”

 


End file.
